


In Sickness and In Health

by lordfartquad



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 15:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6199633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordfartquad/pseuds/lordfartquad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cami comes down with a bad case of the new flu strain sweeping New Orleans, Klaus comes to watch over her and nurse her back to health. While she is sick, she has fever dreams about the two of them in another time. A cute little Klamille multichapter story</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Sickness and In Health

On a Friday afternoon, Cami came home from work feeling more worn out than usual. She plopped down on the couch in the living room and flipped on the TV to the news, where a gaunt-looking woman with a bad 80’s hairdo stared out solemnly from the screen. “And now to our top local story this evening, reporting on the widespread epidemic that has been plaguing the city. Doctors are calling it the Mushroom Flu, due to the hallucinogenic-like dreams that patients with the virus have been reporting.   
“So far, over three hundred cases have been reported in New Orleans and its outlying suburbs since the first case was reported last week, meaning that the virus is highly contagious and spreading rapidly. Doctors are advising people to practice good hygiene, for instance washing your hands thoroughly, eating a diet rich in Vitamin C, and avoiding contact with those who have been confirmed to have the virus. Be on the lookout for symptoms such as headache, fever, chills and sweats, and those telltale hallucinatory dreams.   
“If you find yourself presenting any of these symptoms,” the reporter continued, “please seek medical assistance immediately. Doctors say that in most cases, the virus is not deadly, but it can take more than a week for a victim to make a full recovery.”  
Cami changed the channel quickly. She knew there would only be another couple minutes of the reporter rambling off the various schools and businesses that were closed because of the virus. She always hated the fear-mongering attitude that the news perpetuated, always making people terrified that this was the next bubonic plague, even though the reporter had specifically said that it was rarely life-threatening. Still, she knew that just by having the story on the news, it would induce panic and fear in the city, and people would be closing up shop and going home early.   
It didn’t much matter to her, though. She would keep the bar open under pretty much any circumstance unless there was a freak blizzard or something like that. She just hoped she would still have customers, and that they wouldn’t all be quarantining themselves into their homes.   
When the TV failed to provide anything interesting for her to watch, she turned it off and stretched out on the couch. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.   
Waking up a couple hours later, Cami stretched and rubbed her eyes. She didn’t usually nap that long, but work that day had really run her ragged. She sat up quickly, her stomach growling, wondering if she had any food in the apartment for dinner. Suddenly nauseous, she had to lay back down, her hand over her forehead; it felt as if someone had bashed her skull in with a hammer.   
The skin of her forehead felt warm under her palm, and her mind immediately recalled what they reporter had said. The first symptom of the Flu was a headache. “No,” she whispered to herself, but even doing so sent a shockwave of pain through her head. She told herself she was fine over and over again, but something in the back of her mind tried to talk over that mantra, tried to say that she was sick.   
Slowly, she sat up again and made her way to the kitchen. She opened the fridge and the cupboards, looking to see if she had anything that even seemed remotely appetizing. Cami had hoped that she could find something to eat, hoped that in doing so, it would prove that she was fine and that she couldn’t be coming down with that Flu. And yet every can of soup, every box of cereal, the carton of milk in the fridge, they all turned her stomach in a way that said it would be best if she didn’t eat anything at all.   
Reaching up, she put the back of her hand to her forehead. Her skin was simultaneously hot and clammy, her forehead beaded with sweat. She didn’t think she had a thermometer anywhere, but it didn’t much matter. Something in her gut told her that she had a fever; she just didn’t want to take her temperature and have definitive proof of it. That way, she could remain in denial without feeling guilty.   
She reasoned that she’d just had a long day at work. It had been rather busy at the bar, with one particular customer making lewd comments towards her when he thought she couldn’t hear. She was just tired, she knew, it had been a long day and she probably just felt queasy from thinking about the gross things that guy had said.   
Even though she’d just taken a long nap, she laid down in her bed, the blankets pulled up around her neck as she shivered. In her head, she attributed the chills that wracked her body to a broken thermostat, wholeheartedly believing there was something wrong with the air conditioning, and that she should call the apartment company in the morning to complain. But in the meantime, she felt too tired to even get up and get her phone from the other room.   
Her last thoughts before she drifted off to sleep again were, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s not the Mushroom Flu. 

Of course it was the Mushroom Flu. Klaus knew this as soon as he took a look at her. He had gotten worried when she hadn’t responded to any of his texts in the past eighteen hours, and he knew he could almost always get at least a one-word reply, even if she was busy at work. Whenever she didn’t respond, it always tipped him off that something might be wrong, whether that meant that she was mad at him, or that she was in some sort of trouble. Either way, he figured it would be best if he went over to her apartment to check on her.   
They had only been officially together for a month, but Klaus already had a key to her apartment. “Not because I want you to come over any time you want, but because I know you will anyway,” she’d explained. “And I’d rather you used the front door like a civilized person instead of the window like a creeper.”   
Now he was glad that she’d given the key to him, because he was sure now that if he’d knocked, she would not have been able to get out of bed to answer the door. He was standing over her bed now, looking down at her as she shivered beneath the covers. He put a hand to her forehead for a split second before he pulled it away; she was burning up. She looked positively green, her skin covered in a sheen of sweat, a grayish tinge to her face as she shook and slept. She hadn’t woken up when he’d come in, or even stirred beyond her shivering when he’d touched her. He figured she must be deep in the midst of those hallucinatory dreams…

“My lady?”  
The words barely registered to her.   
“My lady Camille?”  
It wasn’t until her lady-in-waiting tapped her on the shoulder and said her name again that she even realized that someone had been speaking to her. “My lady, we ought to go inside, it is almost time for supper.”  
Camille shrugged the girl away. “We have time.”  
“But the sky threatens to rain at any second,” the servant girl insisted.   
“Yes, I’m aware,” Cami said. In fact, it had been why she’d been so lost in thought that she hadn’t heard the girl talking to her at first.   
In the forest that sat bordering the grounds of the estate, the trees were so cloaked in fog and clouds that it was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the branches began. It was like one continuous entity, no separation of sky from ground. And she was mesmerized by the way the dense air undulated through the treetops, the way it looked like billowing grey smoke as it moved through the branches so gracefully.   
“My lady, please.”  
Cami turned away from the trees once again and shot the girl a withering look. “If you’re so afraid of rainfall, Lady Catherine, then you may retreat inside, but I am not so easily shaken by ordinary natural occurrences.” When she saw Lady Catherine’s eyes fill with hurt, Cami apologized. “Please, go inside, I will only be a few minutes more.”  
The lady-in-waiting looked dubious, then nodded, curtsied, and retreated back towards the castle. With that, Cami turned back to the trees, watching as more clouds and fog descended over the tops of the trees. She felt the lightest mist of rain start to fall on her skin, her upturned face.   
A movement on the southern edge of the forrest caught her eye, taking her attention away from the fog. A procession of carriages and people on horseback was traveling along the road leading up to the castle. She watched as they progressed, studying the flags bearing the honorary guest’s coat of arms to see if she recognized who was coming. She didn’t, and she didn’t know they’d be having guests. Usually someone told her ahead of time so that she could at least pretend that she was preparing to be a gracious hostess.  
The procession was now almost at the portcullis, and Cami strained harder to see if she could recognize anyone, but she figured the most important person was in the carriage, and she couldn’t see inside it. As soon as they had disappeared into the gates, she, taking one last furtive glance at the forrest, retreated towards the castle.   
***  
“The Lady Camille of Aquitaine,” the usher called into the dining room, announcing her presence. When she walked in, everyone was standing, their eyes focused on her as she walked to her seat at the massive dining table. She, in turn, looked back at all of them, seeing all the usuals like her sisters and brother, her cousins, a few other distant relations with barely-noble titles, and all of their mistresses.   
She took her place at her usual seat as she and everyone remained standing, waiting for her father to arrive. At last, he was announced, “His Grace, the Duke of Aquitaine.” Her father entered the hall belly first, always one prone to eating copious amounts and drinking just as much. As he made his way to his seat at the head of the table, everyone bowed their heads until he said, “Sit, sit,” and they did as they were told.   
Servants pushed their chairs in for them, poured wine for everyone at the table. Small conversations broke out amongst various parts of the table, but Cami had nothing particularly interesting to say about her day. Once again, it had been more of the same: wake up, eat a small breakfast with her ladies in her sitting room, read, brush her hair, go riding, work on her embroidery, read some more, maybe have a picnic on the lawn or go for a walk on the grounds. And so she had given up on discussing her day because she feared— or rather, she knew— that it would be the same exact discussion as the day before.   
“Sister,” her younger sister Eleanor said. “Have you met the guests that will be staying with us?”  
“No,” Cami said.   
Her sister’s voice lowered as she spoke next. “Well, there’s really only one of importance, and the rest are his retinue. But wait until you see him,” she said.  
“Why?”  
Eleanor’s eyes were alight as she waggled her eyebrows. “He’s very handsome,” she said so quietly that Camille almost couldn’t hear her.   
“You say that about any man under the age of sixty,” Cami pointed out.   
“But this time he really is,” Eleanor said indignantly. Cami still looked unconvinced, so she said, “You will see. Wait until you meet him.”  
She reminded herself to suspend her disbelief until she saw it with her own eyes. Her sister was, more often than not, disastrously wrong when it came to finding someone attractive. Eleanor had a habit of picking out the buck-toothed, goitered youngest son of some obscure noble who stood to inherit nothing, but still she would fall desperately in love with him for about a month before she would move on to the next. Cami was sure that the new houseguest would be no different.   
***  
When it was late at night, and all of her ladies had gone to sleep, Cami liked to sneak out and go down to the kitchens. She liked to read by the fire there, the smells of meat and herbs and wine mingling as she became engrossed by the stories. The scullery servants were inevitably still there, cleaning up after meals, eating scraps, preparing for the next day of hard work, but they would never say anything. She was sure, too, that Lady Catherine, who slept on a pallet at the foot of her bed, knew that she snuck out, but no one ever tattled on her to her father.   
The hallway was dark, the stone floor cold against her bare feet, and she wrapped her robe tighter around her as she made her way to the kitchen. She hadn’t expected it to be this cold tonight, but she supposed the rain had made the castle a bit dank and chilly. When she had arrived at the kitchen, she immediately went to stand beside the fire, warming herself close to the flames.   
“I don’t believe we’ve met.”  
The voice came so suddenly from behind her that she jumped, her heart lurching in her chest. She hadn’t realized that she wasn’t alone. She spun around and pulled her robe even tighter across herself, recognizing the owner of the voice as a man. Usually the only people she encountered on her excursions to the kitchens were women, and she stayed in her nightclothes, but having a man see her like this was highly improper.   
The man who had spoken was rising from the table and coming towards her. Cami struggled to find something to say to someone who had snuck up on her when she was improperly dressed. And she struggled even more when she got a good look at him.  
He was young, his hair short, curly and dirty blond. His eyes were dark but clear, like he could stare right through her. His face was unshaven, angular, and his lips were full and curled up in a devilish smile. For the second time in as many minutes, her heart stopped completely. All she could think was, Eleanor was right.   
“D-do you always make it a habit of introducing yourself by sneaking up on the lady of the house?” Cami stammered.   
“Do you always make it a habit of sneaking down to the kitchens in your nightclothes?” he retorted.  
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” she said, regaining her composure. “It’s my prerogative, seeing as this is my house.”  
The stranger seemed unsurprised, as if he had already known this before she’d even said anything. “Forgive me for intruding then,” he said in a way that implied he wasn’t sorry at all.   
“Might I ask what you’re doing here?”  
“At your estate or in this kitchen?”  
“Both,” Cami said.  
“I came to the castle because I have been traveling across France on business with the King. And I came into this kitchen because I missed supper and was hoping there would be some scraps for me to eat. May I ask about your presence in this kitchen?”  
“You may not,” Cami replied curtly. “I think it highly improper to continue a conversation with you until I am appropriately dressed. And so I must bid you goodnight.” Cami turned to go and was almost out the door and into the hallway when he called after her.  
“Wait,” he said. “Don’t you want to know who I am?”  
“Not particularly.”  
She was halfway down the hall when he said it anyway. “It’s Niklaus. Klaus Mikaelson.” She didn’t have to turn around to know that he was smiling in that coy smirk as he watched her walk away. 

After hours of watching her toss and turn, Klaus was really starting to get worried. Her fever was just as bad as ever, perhaps even worse than when he’d first come in. She had spent the past few hours rolling around in her bed, twitching, shaking, her skin covered in sweat.   
It was agonizing to sit there and watch her, knowing there wasn’t much he could do to help other than to shove Tylenol and fluids down her throat. There were very few moments where she’d been conscious, and he took full advantage of them, having her drink a glass of water, helping her to the bathroom, putting a cool compress on her forehead. But by and large, she had spent all evening asleep, lost inside a deep state of vivid dreaming.   
He watched her closely during this time, noticing her brow furrow at times, and her lips curling up into a smile at others. He wondered what sort of dream she was having. Most of all, he wondered if he was in it, secretly hoping that he was.   
Every few minutes, he would tell himself to go into the living room, watch TV, take a break from his caregiver duties because he was sure that her condition wouldn’t change drastically in the five minutes that he would be gone. Inevitably, though, as soon as he would go into another room, as soon as he would leave her bedside, he would feel a deep sense of unease in the pit of his stomach and would have to return to her side. Logically, he knew it was highly unlikely that she would take a turn for the worse in the thirty seconds he’d been gone, but he reasoned that he could never be too careful.  
Besides, if he wasn’t keeping constant vigil at her bedside, he would feel totally useless. He knew giving her his blood wouldn’t help— that was really only useful in healing injuries. Illnesses were a different story.   
He searched his memories for something useful in this situation. What had his mother done for him when he’d gotten a cold? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember even encountering anyone who’d had so much as the sniffles in the past three decades, at least. And so, feeling as if he were completely out of ideas, Klaus Mikaelson turned to Google.  
How to care for someone with the mushroom flu  
Results:   
Give the patient lots of fluids, give them aspirin or other fever-reducing medications, wash your hands frequently and avoid contact with the patient so as to avoid contracting the virus, keep the patient wrapped in warm layers. One particular result stood out amongst all the others: If the patient’s fever climbs above 103.5, immediately seek professional medical assistance.   
Klaus didn’t know how high Cami’s fever was, but he knew it was getting close to that bad. He’d done everything on the list that was possible or applicable, and so he felt as useless and incompetent as ever. He got up, closing his laptop, and left her bedroom for the bathroom, peering into the medicine cabinet. He didn’t think he’d seen a thermometer in there when he’d gotten the Tylenol earlier, but it wouldn't hurt to double check.   
After a thorough search of the medicine cabinet, the linen closet, and the junk drawer in the kitchen, he came up empty-handed. Leave it to Camille to not have a bloody thermometer, he thought. For a moment, he considered running out to the pharmacy, but he knew that if he got stressed by leaving her room, he surely wouldn’t be able to handle leaving the apartment. He pulled his phone out of his pocket.  
“I need a favor,” he said to the person on the other end of the line.  
Fifteen minutes later, Elijah was at the door with a brand new thermometer and a container of piping hot soup. “I appreciate this,” Klaus said as his brother entered the apartment.   
“How is she?”  
“Not good, as far as I can tell. I’ve been here for six hours, and she has only been conscious thrice, each time for less than five minutes. I didn’t know what else to do. If her temperature is as high as I think it is, she…”  
“You think we’ll need to take her to the hospital?”  
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Klaus admitted. Anxiety was pooling in his stomach and he hoped desperately that his gut was wrong, that her fever wasn’t as high as he thought it was, that his care would be sufficient enough for her recovery and that she would just need more time.   
“There’s only one way to find out,” Elijah said, sensing his brother’s unease. He removed the packaging from the thermometer as he stepped into Cami’s room. He stopped short when he saw her; even in the pale light of her bedside lamp, he could see how sick she looked, how her skin was greenish grey and covered in sweat, her hair sticking to her face. “Niklaus,” he said under his breath.  
Klaus’ stomach dropped into his feet and he had the sudden urge to cry. He knew now that he wouldn’t even need the thermometer, that her fever was as high as he feared, and that he should have taken her to the hospital by now. And he knew that there was nothing he could do for her.   
This was always hardest for him, realizing that he was helpless in a situation. Usually, he made it his business to avoid situations where the outcome was not up to him, but she was always his gamechanger. For her, he’d already put himself in his most vulnerable positions, and for her, he figured he always would. Because she was worth losing control, and she was worth not knowing the outcome for sure. But this was so beyond anything uncontrollable that he could have ever imagined, and it was shaking him to his very core.   
He watched as his brother carefully turned Cami over from where she was sleeping on her side, laying her on her back. And he knew that Elijah was only doing this for formality, and that they didn’t really need to know her exact temperature to know that she needed to go to the hospital. Elijah stuck the thermometer under Cami’s tongue.  
When it beeped that it was done, he removed it from her mouth, looking back at his brother mournfully. Klaus thought he was going to throw up or pass out; he couldn’t stand the look on Elijah’s face, and he didn’t want to hear the results. “One hundred and four.”  
“Get the car,” Klaus said. “I will meet you outside.”  
He wrapped Cami up in the throw blanket that was crumpled up on the couch in the living room. And he picked her up and carried her out to where Elijah was waiting with the car to take her to the hospital. He sat in the backseat with her laid out across his lap, and as they sped away, he smoothed her hair out of her face. Her skin was hot and sticky with sweat as he pressed his lips to her forehead. Leaning down close to her ear, he wondered if she could hear him if he spoke to her. “Come back to me.”  
***  
“Come back to me.” She didn’t recognize the voice, but it echoed in her dreams like the person was speaking from inside her head. Come back to me.   
Camille woke with a start, her skin drenched with sweat as she sat up in bed and wiped her forehead, the back of her hand coming away damp. Her dreams had been strange, as if she had travelled some time into the future and could not recognize anything about her surroundings. Except the handsome stranger had been there. That Klaus Mikaelson had been in her dream, but she couldn’t remember anything beyond him being there.   
In a daze, Camille got ready for her day, sitting patiently as her servants dressed her and did her hair. Her mind kept drifting to her dreams, trying to fish through memories to see if she remembered any more about why Klaus Mikaelson had stuck out so much in her subconscious after only meeting him for five minutes. It was that smile, the way his mouth sat so perfectly on his face, the way the corners of it had turned up when she had talked back to him. Or the way his eyes had watched her hungrily, taking in every word she said to him as if he could listen to her read the city census and been entertained. Or the way he carried himself, his shoulders set, chest broad, standing straight even as she tried to cut him down a size…  
Again and again, she came up empty-handed when she tried to recall her dreams, and yet she found her mind drifting off in his direction repeatedly. Every time the servant asked if she was satisfied with her hair, Camille would say no, and make the poor girl set to work on it again without so much as a hint as to what she didn’t like about it. Every dress they brought out for her to wear was sent back to the closet. In spite of herself, she found her reasoning to be based on him, wondering if he would think she was beautiful in the gown of gold silk or green damask or red velvet. Each one got sent away, each one she felt would not meet his standards, even though she foolishly tried to repress this reasoning.   
She told herself she was only being this picky because she wanted to impress this strange guest in the hopes that whatever “business with the king” he had involving her father would go well, and that the king would look favorably on her father and in turn grant her a good marriage. After all, she reasoned, the better she looked in the eyes of an agent of the king, the better she would look in the eyes of the king himself. And the king was in charge of arranging, or at least approving of a marriage for her. So she must look and act her best in front of the Niklaus Mikaelson. Certainly his attractiveness had nothing to do with it.   
That evening, her father would be hosting supper in honor of his new guest. Other nobles in the area had been filtering in to see this new face, and to join in the festivities for the night. Camille always dreaded these events because inevitably her father would dig up some cold and painfully awkward first-born son and force her to make small talk with him in the hopes that they would make a connection and that she could be married off to him.   
She had been feeling this pressure to be married for a few years, and by the standards of the times, she was practically a spinster. But it seemed that every time she was set in front of a potential suitor, she could not resist from telling him exactly what she thought of him, whether she found him unimaginably boring, or lewd, or just plain ugly. Her father had had many lectures with her about this, and yet every time she moved to hold her tongue about her opinions, something incredibly rude always came spilling out.   
Surely, tonight would be no different. She wondered if there could possibly be any more single men in the province that she hadn’t yet told off; she didn’t think it was likely. Perhaps she would be re-introduced to someone— she knew it was getting to the point of desperation, and that if she didn’t approve of someone soon, or at least barely tolerate them, her father would pick one of them without her consent.   
With that in mind, she felt an unusual sense of pressure about the feast tonight. An idea struck her suddenly that made her stomach turn over with unease. What if her father would try to set her up with this Klaus Mikaelson fellow? Surely she would not stoop to marry someone who would not respect her modesty or avert his eyes when she wasn’t properly dressed. But still, his dark eyes stood out in her mind, the way they had glanced over her as she stood by the fire. And as much as she wanted to be indignant about his impropriety, at the very core of it, she hadn’t minded.   
***  
At dinner, he stared at her continuously. Every once in a while, she would allow herself to steal a glance back at him, but she wished he would not stare so boldly. Each time she looked over at him, he would not look away, and when their eyes locked, she felt this bolt of electricity run through her.   
As the meal drew to a close, people arose from the tables and began dancing, but Cami remained seated, sipping wine hungrily. She hoped the more she drank, the less nervous she would feel. Her stomach kept flipping over every time she felt his eyes on her, and she hoped and prayed that this would be over soon; she didn’t think she could handle another second of him staring at her.   
At one point, her sister Eleanor leaned in close, her breath hot against Cami’s ear. “He keeps looking at you,” she whispered.   
“Stop it,” Cami said, playfully shoving her sister’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t say such things.”  
“But it’s true,” Eleanor said.   
Cami felt her cheeks go red as her sister stood to join the dancing. Her partner, unsurprisingly, was quite ugly with stooped shoulders and a face full of blemishes. Cami quickly downed another goblet of wine while she watched her sister dance. The song came to a close and everyone clapped and bowed or curtsied to their partners.  
And suddenly, he was in front of her. Klaus Mikaelson. His hand was extended towards her as an offer. “May I have this dance?”   
In spite of herself, she found herself rising to her feet, her hand slipping smoothly into his, relishing the feeling of the warmth of his palm. As they moved out onto the floor, she looked at the chamber musicians. “Play a volta,” she said.   
The music started, and the steps to the dance flowed through her naturally, all those years of dance lessons paying off. Again, she saw that hungry look in his eyes, and behind that, a sense of knowing, like he was certain that he could have her and that she would give in to him. It made her resent him.  
As the song continued, and as they danced across the floor, she formulated a plan. She would not let this man win, whatever his game was. She would fight tooth and nail because she knew he was the type of man that women threw themselves at. She knew all the tricks and how to avoid them, how he would do anything and say anything just to get her into bed with him, only to discard her soon after. All men that she had encountered so far were like that, and so far she had been successful at keeping them at bay.  
Klaus Mikaelson spun her around and lifted her up by the waist, and she could feel the muscles in his shoulders tensing with the effort briefly before she took her hands away, spreading her arms out wide. He spun some more, holding her aloft as the music swelled. And as he lowered her back to the floor as the song came to a close, her chest slid along his, and she was so, so close to him.   
The music ended but he would not disengage from her. His eyes stared with a dark intensity, pulling her in closer with an invisible force. It wasn’t until everyone around them started clapping that she broke free of the trance, shaking her head. They were still chest to chest, both breathing heavily, and she stepped back, blushing and looking at the ground.   
The world seemed to keep on revolving around them but they had come to a standstill. The next song began, and Klaus extended his hand to her again. “Another dance,” he said. Normally it would be more polite to pose it as a question, but his intonation implied it was a statement, almost pleadingly desperate.   
Automatically, her hand reached for his, her palm hovering inches from his palm. As he moved to take her hand, his fingers poised to close over hers, she retracted her hand and put it to her forehead, as if she were feeling faint. “I need more wine,” she said breathily, stepping farther away from him. And she spun on her heel and made a hasty retreat back to the table.  
Once she’d been sitting and hastily gulping wine for several minutes, a fog cleared from her mind. If felt as if she’d been under a spell for the entirety of the dance, and she almost couldn’t remember anything about it. Except the way he had been looking at her.  
Eleanor sat beside her, taking Cami’s goblet of wine out of her hand and drinking the last dregs that remained there. Eleanor stared at her sister with one eyebrow raised. “What?” Cami said. When her sister didn’t say anything, just continued staring, Cami said, “What?” again with a laugh.  
“There is something between you. You and him,” Eleanor’s eyes darted over to where Klaus was dancing with another woman. For an instant, Cami could have sworn she saw his eyes cut away towards her.  
“Be careful how you speak,” Cami said through her teeth. “You mustn’t say such things.”  
“Well, it is the truth,” Eleanor insisted.   
“It does not matter. Father will marry me off to some rich old man any day now, I can feel it.”  
“So you admit there is something there?”  
Cami looked back at her sister. She hadn’t realized she’d been staring at Klaus as he moved across the dance floor, feeling a twinge of jealousy in her chest as she saw the way the other woman was moving with him and the way he was watching her.   
She smiled at Eleanor but there was a sadness behind it. “I admit nothing. Now get me more wine.”

In the days that followed, Camille did absolutely everything in her power to avoid him. She spent most of her day confined to her apartments in the castle, knowing that the guest apartments were on the the exact opposite end of it in the hopes that she would not run into the Klaus Mikaelson.  
Every time she thought of him, it made her irrationally angry. Who gave him the right to look at her like that? Who had given him the right to dance with her like that, to make her feel breathless and lightheaded and dizzy and intoxicated. He had been so impertinent by intruding on her in the kitchens when she’d been in her nightclothes, and then he had been so improper when he’d danced with her. And she knew that, given the chance, he would stare at her again just as boldly, in that way that made her weak in the knees. Better not to give him the chance at all.  
Knowing that he knew about her nighttime forays to the kitchen, she felt like she had lost a safe haven, like she needed a new place to go to read and to get away from the struggles that she faced in the day. She would go to the library and pick a new book, and then return quickly to her sitting room where she would try in vain to focus on the words on the page. A sense of restlessness would always well up within her, like something just wasn’t right, and she knew it was because her secret reading spot in the kitchen had been compromised, and she couldn’t settle for any other place.  
“I’m going to read outside in the garden,” Cami said to Catherine. “By myself,” she added quickly as her lady-in-waiting stood to go with her. Cami tucked her book under her arm, gathered up her skirts and walked quickly to the closest exit out of the castle.  
Once outside, she felt like she could breathe again, like the air inside her apartments had been stifling her and now the openness of the fresh air was finally allowing her to fill her lungs again. She moved around the outside of the castle and ran to the garden, the cool air passing over her face, relieving her tension. She felt as if she had been a prisoner inside, and that now she was allowed to be free.   
In the garden, she sat along the rim of a stone retaining pond, watching as the fish that lived there swam away from her. After a moment, she turned her attention back to her book, a volume of poetry.   
It seemed as if she had only been focused on her reading for a few seconds before she heard a rustle somewhere close to her. “Who’s there?” she called out. No one answered her, but she knew she was not alone.   
Standing, she rolled her eyes, placing her finger in the middle of her book to hold her place. “I’ll have you know it is highly improper to spy on a lady, especially a lady of the house,” Cami called, hoping it would appeal to the spy’s sense of propriety and honor.   
She stomped over in the direction of the noise. “Reveal yourself,” she demanded, but still no one came forward. No sooner had she begun to question whether she had heard anything at all that a long arm was reaching around her, snatching her book from her.  
Cami gasped, startled, whirling around to come face to face with the one person she wanted to see least of all. Her heart had stopped from being taken offguard, but it remained seized and stagnant when she realized who had intruded upon her.   
Klaus Mikaelson had her book in his hand, but he was staring at her, standing too close to her. “You ought not to be out on the grounds alone, your grace,” he said, one side of his mouth curling up into a crooked smirk. “Someone might sneak up on you.”  
Cami snatched her book back from him. “Have you made it your life’s profession to infiltrate all of my private reading places?”  
“I hardly think this is private; after all, I came upon it so easily. I was under the impression that a house’s kitchens and its grounds might be available for anyone to use without it necessarily belonging to any one particular person.”  
“It is my house,” Cami said indignantly, immediately feeling childish after saying it. She knew that even though she lived here, guest were welcome to use the castle and the grounds as they pleased, within reason. She just didn’t know how to explain to him that he had intruded in her space.   
“So you have reminded me, yet again,” he said. He took the book back from her, glancing at the title. “Sir Thomas Wyatt?”  
“It’s poetry,” she said.  
“I’ve never heard of him.”  
“He’s rather popular in England, only recently published. It is rumored that some of his poems are about Anne Boleyn.”  
“Intriguing. In fact, I met the Lady Anne before her untimely death.”  
“And how did you find her?”  
“Not as enchanting as you,” Klaus said.  
Color rose in Cami’s cheeks, and she quickly grabbed her book away from him. “You mustn’t speak that way, Master Mikaelson. You have intruded upon me twice, once while I was improperly twice, you have stared at me in a lewd manner—”  
“Lewd?” he said, looking offended. “Lewd? When have I looked at you in such a way?”  
“At dinner the other evening, and when we danced.”  
“Your grace,” he said, “I am afraid you are mistaken. I have never looked at you in such a way. If it seems to you like I have, then I heartily beseech you to forgive me.” The way he looked at her clearly said that he was not sorry at all.  
“I think you a liar, Master Mikaelson,” she said. She was determined not to let him get away with his attempts at deflection.   
“Ah, now who is being improper? A rather rude thing to say to an honored guest of the house.”  
“I shall be polite towards you when you have given me a reason to be. All of our interactions thus far have been quite unpleasant.”  
“Now I think you the liar, my lady,” he said.  
Cami blushed again, and she looked away. “I shall be insulted no more by you, sir. I will take my leave now.”  
She turned on her heel and was ten feet away from him when she stopped and turned back. “Master Mikaelson, for how much longer do you plan to exhaust my family’s hospitality?”  
“Perhaps another fortnight, perhaps a little more,” Klaus said. “Why do you ask?”  
“No reason,” she said. “I shall just be counting down the days until you leave.” And with a triumphant smile, she left him standing there in the garden. 

——-Another week had passed since their encounter in the garden, and that meant, Cami hoped, that she would only have to endure another week of Klaus Mikaelson’s presence in her household.   
In the time that had passed since his intrusion on her in the garden, she had almost been successful in completely avoiding him. It was only in the obligations that she couldn’t miss, the dinners, that she found herself in his presence. She had felt so embarrassed when he had denied looking at her, but at every dinner, she found herself being more and more sure. She was positive now that he was staring at her, watching her with his dark eyes.   
At least he had refrained from asking her to dance once again. She was sure that if he did, she would turn him down, but at least he had enough good sense to keep his distance.   
That day, the weather was much like how it was the day that Klaus arrived. The grounds were cloaked in a heavy hanging of fog, the tops of the trees once again blending with the smoke-like clouds. “I think we ought to go for a ride today,” Cami told Catherine.   
She, Lady Catherine, and a few other ladies went to the stables, mounted their horses sidesaddle, and rode off into the woods. They took a familiar path through the forrest to where they knew was a clearing where they usually stopped to have a picnic. Today, Cami didn’t feel much like stopping there, so they rode on, the misty air raising goosebumps on their skin.   
They slowed to a walk as they went through a denser, less travelled part of the forrest. There were no clear trails here, as if no horse or man had ever set foot there. The horses walked on beneath their riders, stepping cautiously over buried tree roots and rocks. “My lady,” Catherine called from several paces behind her, “are you sure you know where you are going?”  
A noise closeby caught her attention, the sound of a twig snapping. “Hush,” Cami said. “I think there are dear here.” She dismounted her horse, handing the reins to Catherine. “Wait here,” she instructed. And she set off into the trees towards the noise.  
She moved as slowly, quietly as possible because she knew if they could hear her, they would run away. There was more rustling ahead of her and she followed it as quickly as she could without making too much noise. Up ahead of her, the trees thinned out into a small meadow, grey and misty with the fog. Cami’s breath stilled in her chest and she dared not take another step closer; a group of four deer were grazing there.   
As she cautiously took another step closer, one of them looked up in her direction, and she feared that she had startled them enough for them to run away. But after a few seconds of vigilance, it returned to its grazing.   
It was a rare occurrence that she got to see them so up close. Usually she did not see deer unless they were dead, tied up, being taken into the castle by her father’s retinue after a hunt. To see them alive, serenely eating the grass, unaware of her presence, made a warm feeling flood her stomach. She watched them intently, studying their movements, their graceful legs, the swish of their short tails.   
Slowly, she lowered herself to the ground so that she was sitting. The deer continued their meal, still unaware that she was there. She did not know how long she had been sitting there, watching them, but she was sure it was long enough to make her ladies impatient or worried.   
An object came whirring past her, zooming into the clearing, striking one of the dear in its rear thigh. The others ran away, hopping out of the meadow while the other limped away slowly. An arrow, the thing that had whizzed past Cami, was sticking out of its hind quarter.   
She jumped up from the ground in alarm, unaware that anyone else had been there. She turned to see who had shot the arrow but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. Storming out from behind his cover of a nearby tree, Klaus Mikaelson began running after the injured deer. Before she knew what she was doing, Cami blocked him with her body, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would try to run right through her. They both toppled to the ground, the weight of his body pressing her into the grass and dirt.   
He sat up quickly, his gaze flickering between where she was still laid flat on the ground, and the clearing. He made to stand up but she grabbed his sleeve, holding him there. “You will not go chase that hart and leave me here in the dirt,” she said through gritted teeth.   
“But it’s getting away!” he whined, desperately trying to stand again.   
She retained her hold on his sleeve, pulling him back down to his knees. He was now directing his full attention to the empty clearing, surely wondering how far the injured deer could have gotten and if he could catch up with it.   
“You will help me up, you will brush me off, you will apologize, and perhaps only then may you go in search of your intended kill.” She was pretty sure she had never spoken with so much contempt before in her life.   
Finally, he tore his eyes away from the meadow and looked down at her. And to his credit, he did seem genuinely sorry that he had knocked her over. He did as she had instructed, helping her to her feet. “Turn around, please,” he said, and she did. She felt his hands gliding across the fabric of her dress as he tried to brush the mud and dirt off of it. “I’m afraid there might be some staining,” he said sheepishly when she’d turned back around.  
“Then I believe you should acquire a new dress for me,” she said.  
“I-I will,” he stammered. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head once, looking back to the clearing. “It’s long gone by now,” he said sadly. “What are you doing out in the woods here anyway? I wouldn’t have missed my shot if you hadn’t been here.”  
“I’m sure you’re a lousy shot anyway,” Cami said, anger rising in her. “It’s probably out there suffering right now.”  
“Well, I would have been able to go after it if you had not tackled me!” he shot back.   
“Perhaps next time don’t get in my way,” she said. With that, she stomped off, back towards where her horse and her ladies were waiting, leaving him standing in the woods. If he was going to make a habit of ambushing her, then she would make it a habit of leaving him standing there alone, having had the final word.  
“Wait,” he called after her. But she kept going. She heard him running to keep up, and he grabbed her hand to stop her. “Please. I’m sorry,” he said, his hand still clasped around hers. “I want to show you something.”  
“What is it?”  
He smiled wickedly. “You will just have to trust me.”  
“Trust a man who keeps sneaking up on me at inopportune times and now wants to take me alone into the woods?”  
He laughed. “Just come on. You will see, it will be worth it.”  
Reluctantly she followed, extracting her hand from his before she walked behind him. They walked deeper into the forrest, the trees growing denser and closer together before they opened up into a meadow much larger than the one they’d originally been by. Cami stifled a gasp as she looked out onto it; there, about a dozen deer, both stag and doe, were grazing. They stood together at the edge of the clearing, watching as the deer continued to eat.  
“You see that one there?” Klaus whispered, standing over her shoulder, his mouth close to her ear as he spoke. A doe had picked her head up, her ears pricked, her large brown eyes gazing in their direction. “See how she wears a collar?”  
Cami looked at the animal for a long moment. “I see no collar,” she said, looking over her shoulder, up at him where his face was hovering so close to hers.   
“Surely you see one. For it is graven with diamonds in letters plain/ There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,/ And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”   
“You read my book,” she breathed. “By Sir Thomas Wyatt.” Her stomach flooded with warmth, a rosy color rising in her cheeks.  
Klaus simply smiled at her. “I found it quite an interesting read. Perhaps you should like to share more books with me.”  
For a moment, Cami’s stomach melted into her feet, and she thought about how close he was, how easy it would be to pull him closer and kiss him. But she regained her composure and remembered that this would be one of his tricks. “Why should I?”  
“I would consider it a great honor to know what you know, to read what you read, to see the world as you do.”  
“I may send a few to your quarters,” Cami said. “And I shall see you back at the castle.” She could not stand another second of being so close to him; she knew that if she did not break away, she would lose all her sense of reason. And so they marched back towards their horses, all the while, Cami making sure to keep ten paces between them.

——-“Your relationship to the patient? Sir?”   
“She’s my…girlfriend,” he said after a long moment. It took him a minute to think of the right response to the question— he had almost said she was his therapist out of sheer habit.  
“Do you have any medical information on her?”   
“I’ve brought her insurance card,” Klaus said, producing it from his wallet.  
“Alright sir, I will have you fill out these forms to the best of your ability,” the nurse said, handing him a clipboard with papers. Klaus took it and he and Elijah went to the seating area.  
Cami had been admitted immediately, and they had wheeled her away on a gurney, and Klaus didn’t know where they had taken her. Every time he set the pen against the paper to begin filling out the forms, he could not focus. Elijah put his hand on his brother’s forearm, taking the clipboard away from him. “I will take care of it, brother. You go in an see her.”  
Klaus went back up to the nurse’s station. “We are working on filling out the forms, but in the meantime I would like to see her. My girlfriend.” He said it again because he liked the sound of it, and he liked letting other people know that they were together.   
“I’m sorry, sir, but visiting hours for non-family ended several hours ago.”  
He looked at his watch to see that it was half past nine pm. “But I’m her partner,” he said, knowing he was coming off a bit whiny, but he didn’t see why this would be a big deal for him to go in and see her.   
“I’m very sorry, sir. You’ll just have to come back tomorrow at—”  
He caught the nurse’s eye and held eye contact for a moment, watching as her pupils dilated with his compulsion. “You will let me in to see her. You will let me stay with her for as long as I please,” he said, his jaw tense as he spoke.   
The woman blinked slowly, taking in his words as commands that she was now physically unable to disregard. “She’s in room 3012,” the nurse said mechanically, and he brushed past her as soon as the words had left her mouth.   
He took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor. As he passed the nurse’s station at the end of the hall, a man in purple scrubs stopped him. “Sir, do you have a visitor’s pass?”  
Klaus rolled his eyes. This place was uncomfortably tight with security. Of course, that was usually a good thing, but when it came to him, a man who just wanted to make sure his girlfriend was well taken care of after visiting hours, it was painfully annoying. He marched up to the man, leveling his eyes at him until he felt their gaze click under the compulsion. “You will give me one. You will not ask me for any more information about myself. You will let me stay here for as long as I want.”  
The nurse set to work drawing up a special adhesive name tag with the word VISITOR across the top in bright orange letters. The nurse handed it over and Klaus slapped it across his chest before continuing on his way down the hall to room 12. On his way, he passed a couple of nurses who nodded at him as he went by, and he considered compelling them too because he was certain that at the rate things were going, every single person who worked in this hospital would tell him he would need to come back during non-family visiting hours. But he let them pass without incident, deciding he would only compel someone if they approached them.   
Room twelve was at the end of the hall on the left, and it was lit with fluorescent lights that shone through a curtained window. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.   
Cami was curled up on her side, an IV in her arm, and she was twitching in her sleep. A doctor in a white lab coat was standing by her bed, writing something on a chart. When Klaus entered the room, the doctor glanced at his VISITOR’s sticker, then gave him a practiced smile. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Dr. Handler.”  
He decided he wouldn’t need to compel her because she did not seem like she would give him a hard time, considering his visitor’s pass. “You are?” she said, extending a cold, dry hand for him to shake.  
“Her boyfriend, Klaus. Mikaelson. How is she?”  
“Well, it’s good that you brought her in, she was starting to get dehydrated. We have her on fever-reducers and fluids. There’s not much else to do except to wait for her to sweat it out. It might take a few days, but right now she’s stable. I wouldn’t be too worried.”  
On second thought, Klaus thought it better to get all the information that he could out of the doctor in case she was hiding something from him. Their eyes locked and her pupils dilated as the compulsion set in. “Tell me everything you know.”  
The doctor’s face went blank, her eyes locked with his. “I have. She has the Mushroom flu, she’s slightly dehydrated, but we have her on fluids and we are bringing her fever down. That’s all we can do. Now we wait.”  
He broke their gaze, nodded, and the doctor finished writing on her clipboard, hooking it onto the foot of the bed. “I will be back to check on her in a couple hours.” She stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her, leaving Klaus alone with Cami.   
He pulled a chair up next to her bed, feeling that sense of helplessness set in once again. He didn’t know what he’d thought, that the hospital would have some miracle cure for her, that they could just give her a pill and she would wake up fresh as a daisy. But at the very least, he thought they would have a better solution than to do the exact same things he’d been doing at her apartment.   
He got up and dimmed the lights so that there was only a lamp on now, casting low light across the room. When he sat back down, he took her hand in his. It was still clammy, covered in sweat, but at least in this light she did not look so green. He thought for a moment about crawling into the bed beside her, but he decided against it, knowing that he was already pushing his luck just by being here, and he didn’t want to push it further.   
So he leaned forward in his chair, resting his head on top of their clasped hands, and he drifted off to sleep.   
Next thing he knew, he was being jerked awake. He stood in a panic, his eyes scanning the room rapidly for any perceived threat. When none became apparent, he looked down at Cami. He had dozed off for an hour at most, but he felt rested now, sure that he would not sleep again until the next evening.   
She was on her back now but she had awoken him when she had practically convulsed off the bed. She had jerked her hand out of his, and now her arms were folded across her chest in a defensive gesture. It was almost as if something had startled her or caught her off-guard. He was sure that it was entirely possible.   
Klaus moved to a chair that was reclinable, pulling it closer to her bedside. He watched her carefully but she did not stir very much. After twenty minutes, Dr. Handler came back in. “How is she?”  
“No change,” Klaus said grimly. “She’s dreaming in there.”  
“Yes, that is one of the symptoms of the virus. It will be really interesting to hear if she remembers any of it once she wakes up. Most of the patients don’t, but I’ve heard a few stories from the ones that did.”  
“And what did they dream about?”  
“It depended on the person,” the doctor said. “Some of them dreamed of magical creatures like dragons, some dreamed they were living in a different world like the zombie apocalypse. Some said they just saw colors, just a bunch of different colors the whole time. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”  
The doctor left, leaving the door to the room open. A few seconds later, Elijah stepped inside. “How is she?”  
“Just the same as she has been,” Klaus said.   
“She will be alright, brother,” Elijah reassured him.  
“I just don’t know how to handle these…human frailties. We heal so quickly, so easily. And if she were injured, she could be healed just the same. But a sickness like this, I don’t know how to handle. I don’t know what to do.”  
“She is a fighter. A brave bartender, as you say. She will pull through.”  
“But I cannot stand this waiting business! I cannot just sit here and wait and do nothing while she is suffering!” Klaus shouted.  
“I would encourage you to keep your voice down,” Elijah said calmly. “And you are not doing nothing. You are here with her, and she can sense you here, I know she can. And you will be the first face she sees when she wakes up. That will be important to her, I know it.”  
Klaus looked unconvinced, but he knew there was nothing more to do than sit back down and wait. “I brought some books, I thought you could read to her,” Elijah said. He handed a book to his brother, who took it, turning it over in his hands.   
“A volume of poems and sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt,” Klaus said quietly. As Elijah sat down, his brother opened the book to the first poem.  
“Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,  
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.  
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,  
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.  
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind  
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore  
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,  
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.  
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,  
As well as I may spend his time in vain.  
And graven with diamonds in letters plain  
There is written, her fair neck round about:  
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,  
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”

——The following evening, when he extended her hand to her after the meal, she placed her palm in his and followed him onto the dance floor. They danced a pavane, a slow and stately dance that had them facing each other. When he drew near enough to her, he said, low enough for only her to hear, “I have good news.”  
“What is that?” Cami said, careful to keep her voice even.  
“I have decided to extend my stay here.”  
“You mean you have decided to impose yourself on my family’s hospitality longer. I fail to see how that is good news.”  
Klaus smiled at her, and she felt her insides liquify. Put up the wall, she thought to herself, you will not give way to his charms. “How much longer do you intend to stay, Master Mikaelson?”  
“Another week, at least.”  
“And do you have a reason for this extension of your stay?” Cami asked.  
“I have several,” Klaus said, that annoying crooked smirk plastered across his face.  
“Oh? Care to share them with me?”  
“I will consider it, but I can assure you that they will likely reveal themselves to you in good time.”  
Their eyes locked as they danced closer, and her stomach churned under his gaze. “That makes me quite nervous, in truth,” she said.  
“Then have a little faith, Lady Camille. You have nothing to fear.”  
Something about the way he watched her hungrily, his dark eyes pulling her in closer no matter how she tried to resist, told her that she had everything to fear.   
At the end of the week, Cami was summoned before her father in his chambers. “Beloved daughter,” he said.  
“Father.” She curtsied before him, her gaze remaining lowered. “You wished to see me?”  
“Yes,” he said. He paused a long moment, as if he were trying desperately to collect his thoughts. “It is time now that you… I know this shall be difficult for you to accept but I… you must…”   
Cami had rarely seen her father this flustered. Usually he was calm and collected, but something was bothering him. “What must I do, Father?” she asked, hoping this would encourage him to spit it out.  
“You must marry. And I have selected a suitor for you.”  
Her heart shuddered in her chest as it simultaneously filled with hope and fear. In spite of herself, a thought bubbled up in her head: I hope it’s him. I hope it’s Klaus Mikaelson.   
“Marry,” she repeated.  
“Yes,” her father said, not meeting her eye.   
She waited for him to continue, but when he didn’t, she said, “And who is to be my betrothed?”  
“His name is Lord Henry Carpenter, the Duke of Suffolk.”  
“Suffolk,” she said. Her tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of her mouth now, as everything dried out. “I am to go to England?”  
“Yes,” her father said. Still, he would not look at her. It seemed he knew how much the news would upset her, how much she would protest and fight and try to find any loophole to get herself out of it.   
Her father looked up at an usher, nodding at him as he stepped forward and handed Cami a small painted portrait. The man in the painting had a long face that was framed by strawberry blonde hair beneath a velvet cap. His black eyes stared out at the world flatly, void of all emotion, his mouth set in a thin straight line. He was not handsome by any standard, but at least he was not ugly. Of course, there was no way to tell for sure until she met him in person, as it was well known that portrait painters tended to embellish their subjects to make them more attractive.   
“I am to be the Duchess of Suffolk?”  
Things were not making sense to her, and she found herself needing to go through everything very carefully in her mind in order to try to grasp it. She was going to be married. She was going to be married to a man she had never met. And she would have to leave for England, and she was sure that once she left, she would never see her family again.   
“Do I have a say in this?”  
Her father sighed deeply. “Daughter, if you have valid reasons to protest the match, make them known now. But I shall remind you that this match would be highly advantageous, one that could foster good relations between England and France, which have long been at war.”  
Even though her father had just said that she could decline the match if she found a serious problem with it, she knew that it was just words. In reality, the deal was already done, and all that was left to do was sign the contract and have the ceremony. “Tell me of this Henry, Duke of Suffolk.”  
“He is described as tall, handsome, jovial. He enjoys the hunt, archery, and tennis. He is forty-five years old. You shall be his third wife.”  
Cami’s insides froze. “What happened to his first two?”  
“They died in childbirth.”  
She looked again at the portrait, the placid face captured there looking back at her. “May I have a few days to think about it?”  
Sighing again, her father put his hands over his eyes. “Yes. I expect your answer in three days’ time.”  
“Thank you, Father,” she said. Quickly, she handed the portrait back to the usher, curtsied, and backed out of the room. The whole time she had been standing before her father, she had felt mechanically absent, like she hadn’t really been there and a robot was standing in her place, taking in everything without feeling or interpreting any of it.   
As she ran through the hall, out of the castle and into the garden, it all came crashing down on her. The realization that she would have to leave her family, all she had ever known, to go to a country she had never been to and marry a man she had never even seen. Sitting on the edge of the pond, she watched the fish swimming among the reeds and she tried to calm herself. She had known this for her whole life, that one day she would marry someone of her father’s choosing and have little say in the matter. But still she had imagined that she would be able to put up enough of a fight about it to encourage some leniency about it, and that if she turned enough men down, eventually she would be able to wed someone of her choosing.  
It was a pipe dream, she knew now. She was a fighter, certainly, but it felt as if all the wind had been taken out of her sails. Every argument that she had always rehearsed when she imagined the issue coming up floated away, and she could come up with no good excuse to get out of it.   
It warmed her heart, though, to see that her father had been so flustered during their conversation. He had known that she would not be happy to do this, and he had graciously allowed her to have a few days to consider the offer. Although she knew, she was almost certain, that she would have to accept.   
In the library that evening, she found it difficult to concentrate on her reading. Instead, she paced up and down the long shelves lined with books that had been collected over decades. Her thoughts raced through her brain. Married. England. Third Wife. She searched for any excuse she could come up with to avoid it. The only one she could think of that made even a lick of sense was if she could convince her father that the first two wives had been murdered. But that was near impossible, she didn’t have any evidence.   
The air in the library was stifling her, and she couldn’t get a decent breath in. Her pacing quickened until she was racing for the door only to come face to face with an usher. “The Lord Niklaus Mikaelson wishes to see you,” he said.  
Klaus appeared from behind him, his expression pained when he got a glace at her. She was sure she looked a bit crazed, her eyes wild, her skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat. When the usher had closed the doors of the library, leaving them in privacy, Klaus asked if she was alright.  
“Yes,” she said, breathless. She turned away from him, walking back towards an open window, hoping that a breeze would waft in and cool her down. “Thank you, my lord.”  
“You don’t look it,” Klaus said, stepping towards her.  
She held up her hand, indicating that he should not come any closer. “I…I’ve just received some upsetting news. But you need not trouble yourself with it. I should rather not like to talk about it, if you please,” she said.   
“Would you like me to leave?”  
She put her hands on the cool stone of the windowsill and looked out onto the grounds of the castle, the evening breeze blowing her hair away from her face. When she looked back at him, she was surprised to see how worried he was for her. “No, I would you would stay.”  
“I should be glad to,” he said, but his brow was still furrowed with worry.   
She was almost tempted to spill everything, to tell him that she was to be betrothed to a total stranger, that she could see no way out of it, that she wished she could run away somehow. But as concerned for her as he looked, she could not find the strength in her to say it all out loud. Speaking about it to another person would make it real, and she wasn’t ready for that.   
An idea came into her head, this one easily spoken out loud. “Would you read to me, Master Mikaelson?”  
He looked surprised at this, obviously not expecting her to say that. After a long moment, he said, “Yes. It would be an honor.”   
She sat in a chair by the window, tucking her feet up underneath her, forgetting all sense of propriety at the moment. She just wanted to hear his voice, hoping that if she lost herself in the sound of it and lost herself in the words, it would quiet the static in her brain.   
As she watched Klaus go to a bookshelf, perusing through the titles, she bit her lip, relishing the way his dark eyes scanned over the books. And her stomach lurched as she caught herself watching him like this, because she knew it was the very same way that he always looked at her.   
No, no, don’t go there, she thought to herself. You are only seeing him this way because you feel closed in by another marriage. She reasoned that she would not even consider him attractive if she weren’t about to be forced into marriage to someone else.   
Cami closed her eyes then as he selected a volume and sat down in a chair across from her. The sound of his voice was smooth, deep, beautiful as he began reading to her.  
“I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I  
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?  
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?  
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?  
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.  
If ever any beauty I did see,  
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,  
Which watch not one another out of fear;  
For love, all love of other sights controls,  
And makes one little room an everywhere.  
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,  
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,  
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,  
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;  
Where can we find two better hemispheres,  
Without sharp north, without declining west?  
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;  
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I  
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.”  
———-It was early morning now, the sun just seeping in through the window to the outside world. Klaus closed the book that he had been reading to her, setting it on the rolling table a nurse had brought in not too long ago. “You should eat something,” the nurse had said, leaving a tray of food sitting on the rolling table.   
Klaus had simply said, “Thank you,” leaving the food untouched. As he stood now, he leaned over Cami’s still-unconscious form, placing the back of his hand on her forehead. At least it seemed now as if her fever were coming down, although it was not completely broken. He was sure that even if her temperature returned to normal, they would want to keep her an extra night for “observation.” But Klaus had already decided that if that was the case, he would compel the doctors to discharge her. The sooner she would be able to get home, the better.   
He thought then of what she would be saying if she were awake now. Probably something smart aleck-y, probably something about how bad she had to pee because of how much they’d pumped her full of fluids. At this, he smiled for the first time in what felt like days. When he smoothed her hair out of her face, the corners of her mouth turned up slightly.   
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and Elijah’s name flashed across the screen. “Yes?”  
“How is she?” Elijah asked.  
“The same, if only a little better. It’s hard to tell. The doctors, as always, have given me the same platitudes of ‘waiting and seeing’ for each of the past four times they have been in here. It seems their incompetence knows no bounds. At the very least, her fever is decreasing, slowly but surely.” He watched Cami as she slept, her fingers twitching every once in a while. “I wonder what she’s seeing in there.”  
“There’s one way to find out,” Elijah offered. “Bring in a witch.”  
“I’d rather not go to the trouble,” Klaus said. “The witches of New Orleans are hardly my biggest fans. I’m sure they would require steep payment in exchange for such a favor. I would rather wait until she wakes, see if she remembers.”  
“Just a thought,” Elijah said. “Should I come by and bring you anything?”  
“No,” Klaus found himself saying. He would rather stay with her by himself, to be her sole guardian and caregiver.   
He hung up the phone, sitting back down, his hand slipping easily into hers. Her head rolled to face him, her mouth still curled in a serene smile. Her lips moved, small sounds slipping out but nothing coherent, just mumbles. And then words came out. “Master Mikaelson,” she said, her voice barely audible, but the words clear and precise.   
Cami turned from where she was lying on her back over to her side so her whole body was facing where he sat beside her bed. Her fingers closed around his hand in hers, her grip strong and unwavering. He squeezed her hand back. “Yes,” he said against the back on her hand, kissing it once. “Yes, I’m here, Camille.”  
“Read to me,” she said, her voice so faint and weak, but it was good to hear her talk.  
“Of course,” he said quietly, a smile spreading across his face. It filled him with warmth that maybe she could hear him in there, wherever she was, and that maybe if he said it enough times, she would come back to him. “If I do, will you come back to me?”  
She didn’t answer, just kept on smiling in her sleep. So he extracted his hand from hers and picked up the book from the rolling table, and began to read to her once more. 

After dinner, he sat down beside her, careful not to look directly at her. “I have a gift for you,” he said, his voice hushed. The music carried on, people danced around them, and no one noticed that they were talking to each other.   
“Meet me in the library in five minutes,” he said, and he stood and left.   
Camille’s stomach dropped as he walked away. What could he possibly have for her? The very thought of it, the mere speculation of what it could be made her unspeakably nervous. Her mind wandered to a place where her imagination took over and she pictured this gift being a kiss. They would be alone in the library together, and no one would even notice that they had left. She pictured how it would be to kiss him, to let him hold her, to feel his hand on the small of her back. And she could not tell if such a situation would be a best-case scenario or a worst-case.   
It felt as if it were taking forever for five minutes to pass, and yet when she felt the waiting period had been sufficiently long, she still worried that it would be too soon. As she stood, no one watched her leave, and she could not tell if this was good or bad. If someone had seen her go, maybe they could come after her, stop whatever would happen between her and Klaus. Then maybe it would be easier to avoid him until he left, and it would stop her from making a mistake.   
In the library, Klaus was standing over a table, an angled bookstand before him. He was deep in thought, and did not look up when she came in, his brow furrowed in intense concentration.   
“Master Mikaelson?” she said, unsure as to whether or not he knew she was there.  
He did not look up when she said this, just motioned for her to come closer. As soon as she was within a few feet of him, he put up his hand for her to stop. “Before I give your gift to you, I must give you a warning. I do not mean to alarm or offend you.”  
“You’re making me very nervous,” she said.  
“I’ve got you a book,” he said. “A special book.”  
She stepped closer to look at the book that was propped up on the stand as he flipped it back to the title page. “The Birth of Mankynd, by Eucharius Rosslin,” Cami read. She looked at him, noticing that he was studying her reaction. She certainly hadn’t expected that this would be her gift, so it took her a minute to overcome that emotion and let the gratitude sink in. “A book about childbirth?”  
He watched her carefully, and then his eyes filled with hurt. “I have offended you. You do not like it,” he said, closing the book completely. He moved to take the book off the stand, but she stopped him.   
“No, I love it, it’s just unexpected,” she said. She took the book from his hands and opened it to a page about a third of the way through. She studied the pictures on the pages. “It’s fascinating,” she said. When she looked back up at him, his face was lit up and she thought about how badly she wanted to keep that expression on his face at all times.   
“But how did you get this? Isn’t this banned?”  
At that, he smiled devilishly and she felt her insides melt. She wanted so desperately to pull him into her, to kiss him, but she knew it was wrong. She knew that letting herself get close to him would only make it harder to marry a man she didn’t even know. She closed her eyes in the hopes that avoiding looking at him would make it easier to resist him.  
“I have my ways,” he said mysteriously.   
Cami turned her attention back to the book, poring over the pages, studying the illustrations intensely. “Truly fascinating,” she said, mostly to herself.  
“Well, I ought to leave you to your reading,” Klaus said, turning to go.  
Before she could stop herself, she found her hand shooting out and latching around his wrist. When she realized what she had done, she retracted her hand slowly, sheepishly. “Forgive me,” she said, looking down. “I wish you would stay, though.”  
He looked at his wrist, where her fingers had been only a second ago. He looked at her, his eyes searching her face, and she could have sworn that he moved infinitesimally closer to her. “I…” he said, and she saw him swallow. His tongue darted across his lower lip, and she knew in that moment that he felt it too, whatever this thing was between them. It would be so easy now to step into him, to press her mouth against his, to lose herself in his touch.  
“I should go,” he said quickly, gruffly, as he turned on his heel and hightailed it out of the room. Cami was left in the library alone, knowing with definitive certainty that he had felt a connection between them, and yet he had run away.   
The next morning, after spending all night reading the book, Cami found herself standing at the doors to the guest apartments. “I should like to see the Master Mikaelson,” she told the usher.  
“Master Mikaelson is regrettably not taking visitors this morning. He has asked not to be disturbed.”  
“Oh,” she said, feeling her heart sink. “Would you please tell him then that I wish to thank him for the book he gave me.”  
“Yes, Lady Camille.”  
She had hoped that she would be able to discuss the book with him, or at least thank him in person, but she guessed he was busy or something. She would check back later, or at the very least see him at dinner.  
At dinner, though, he was notably absent. “Have you seen Master Mikaelson?” Cami asked Eleanor.  
“No, why?” her sister said, waggling her eyebrows. “Do you fancy him?”  
“No,” Cami said too quickly, defensively. She knew she wasn’t fooling anyone.   
“Word is that no one has seen him all day, not even his own servants.”  
“How strange,” Cami said, and she wondered where he could be and what he could be up to. Even if they didn’t discuss the book, she just wanted to see him, just wanted to be in the same room as him. As the evening wore on, she became more and more scared about how badly she wanted to see him. After all, this was only making things harder for when she would have to give her decision to her father about her marriage to the Duke of Suffolk.   
She drank more and more wine in order to numb her feelings, but that only seemed to make them stronger. The more she drank, though, the more she knew that her proposed match to the Duke of Suffolk was not in her hands, and that her father had only posed it as a choice to her to placate her. There was no point in waiting to think over her decision because in reality there was no decision at all. She would have to marry the Duke of Suffolk and go to England, and putting off her answer was only making things harder. The more time she took to “think it over,” she reasoned, the more time she was allowing herself to spend getting closer to Klaus.   
“Father,” she said. “I shall accept my betrothal to the Duke of Suffolk,” she said.  
Her father beamed with joy and announced it to the hall, his voice echoing as everyone clapped and Cami felt her cheeks go red. She would have rather been hiding under a rock at this point, she felt so embarrassed, and she just wished that everyone would leave.  
When it seemed like an appropriate amount of time had passed since the announcement, and people had stopped making toasts in her honor, she excused herself from the hall and retired to her room. There, she cried herself to sleep. 

—————Her fever was spiking again, and again the medical staff was completely incompetent. They were telling him the same things they had been saying all along, that they were giving her fluids and fever reducers, and that the best thing to do, in fact the only thing to do was to wait.   
As he paced around the room, he watched her turn greener and greyer, her skin sweating so much that her hair was almost completely drenched. She was shivering violently, twitching, her face screwed up. As he looked closer he saw that two distinct trails of water were flowing down her face. He stepped up to her, his hand on her cheek— was she crying? It was certainly not sweat.  
Fury rose within him, and he felt a new surge of anger towards the nurses and doctors. Something in there, something in her fever dream was making her cry, and the fact that she could be suffering in there and there was nothing to be done about it was infuriating.   
He searched his mind for a solution. Was there really nothing he could do, nothing the doctors could do? Could it be possible that the Great Klaus Mikaelson could be completely stuck and rendered helpless by a simple human virus?  
It wasn’t just that there was nothing that he could do, it was that there was no research on the Mushroom Flu. No studies, no definitive data, no solid proof that Cami would come out of this alright. The doctors could tell him that she would be okay all they wanted, but he had yet to see it. He had asked them how long to expect her to be out, and they didn’t know. He had asked them if there was any other medication they could give her, and they didn’t know. He had asked them if there would be any lasting side-effects, and they didn’t know. It was taking every ounce of willpower within him to not snap the neck of every hospital staff member that he came into contact with.   
Cami let out a small sob and turned her face into the pillow, her arms weakly wrapped around it as she continued crying. At last, he stopped his pacing and sat down beside her, grabbing some tissues from a box at her bedside table. He realized now that the best thing he could do for her was just to be beside her, to hold her hand and keep reading to her. After all, there was nothing else to do, he couldn’t make her better, all he could do was wait like everyone kept telling him to do. Waiting was not exactly Klaus Mikaelson’s forte. But for her, to take care of her, to make sure she would be alright, it would be worth it. 

As the day dawned, the reality of what Cami had done sunk in, and she did not leave her bed until noon.   
Had she really gotten roaring drunk and said that she would marry the Duke of Suffolk? Was there any way that she could take it back? She knew there wasn’t, it was hopeless, and she would have to try her best to accept her fate.   
“Lady Camille, are you ill?” her lady-in-waiting asked.  
“No, Lady Catherine, just feeling quite tired from last evening’s festivities. I think I shall go for a ride.”  
The day passed in a blur for her, and she took no joy in it. The only thing on her mind was the terrible mistake she had made.  
When it came time for dinner, she claimed that she was ill, staying in her apartments. She didn’t know how soon she would be expected to leave this place, how soon she would be expected to marry a man she had never met, but her stomach was churning as if she had been told she would be leaving within the hour. She doubted that she could have eaten anything even if she wanted to.   
After dinner, her sister Eleanor snuck into her room in her nightclothes and they crawled into Cami’s massive bed together. “I heard you were sick,” Eleanor said.  
“Yes, I haven’t been feeling well.”  
“Liar,” Eleanor said. “You’re regretting your decision to marry the Duke of Suffolk because you’re in love with Klaus Mikaelson.”  
“You know, your ability to read me so keenly gets quite old after a while. And I am not in love with Master Mikaelson,” she said.  
“Keep saying that to yourself, if you must. But you know that you love him.”  
“Stop saying that, please.”  
“You know, I heard the most interesting thing about him today,” Eleanor said.  
“Oh? What’s that?”  
“I heard that he’s not actually an agent of the king. In reality, he’s a conman from somewhere in Scandinavia. How romantic is that?”  
“Why would you say such a thing?”  
“Well, it’s true!” said Eleanor indignantly.   
“Who told you this?”  
“One of his personal ushers,” she said. “And it’s the hottest talk amongst the other servants.”  
“Wait a minute, how did you get this information from said usher?”  
Eleanor didn’t say anything, simply blushed. “No, you didn’t,” Cami said, laughing.  
“He said he would tell me a secret if I gave him a kiss. He was very handsome, so I didn’t protest.”  
“You think any man is handsome.” But as the humor of the moment died away, a frightening thought filled Cami’s mind. It seemed that although she had not heard this straight from Klaus himself, this rumor was true. And if it could be so easily extracted from any servant in his employ, then surely the word would make its way to her father. So if Klaus Mikaelson was truly a conman who had deceived them all, then her father would find a way to bring him in front of the King himself, where Klaus would surely be sentenced to death.   
“Do you think Father knows yet?”  
“Who says Father will know?” Eleanor said.  
Cami leveled a look at her sister that said it was obvious. People around the house talked, they always did, and it always got back to her Father. It was just a matter of time.   
“I don’t think he knows yet,” Eleanor said quietly.   
“He must not know. I am certain it will get back to him eventually, but it must not be from you. Do you promise?”  
“I do so swear,” Eleanor said. And they locked their pinkies together.   
Soon after, her sister fell asleep, and Cami’s mind remained racing. She could not turn off her thoughts, her worries that what her sister could be true. Could it be possible that this Klaus Mikaelson had been a phony all along, and that she had been tricked into caring for someone who was nothing more than a deceiver? She didn’t want to believe it was true.  
The more she thought about it, though, the more she knew that she would have to confront him about it. If she could speak to him in person then she could figure out what to do about this situation. If it wasn’t true then at least she would know for sure, coming straight from the source. But if it was true—it hurt too much to think about that. At least if it really was true, she could warn him that people were talking, and that he should leave as quickly and quietly as possible to avoid getting caught.   
When her sister had been asleep for at least an hour, she slipped out of bed and put on her robe. She really wasn’t sure what she was doing; surely people would talk if she went to his apartments asking for him in the middle of the night. There was only one small sliver of chance that he could be somewhere else, and she would have to bank on that.  
The halls were dark, cold, as she walked towards the kitchen. It was her last hope that he would be there because she knew that she would not easily get a chance to speak to him alone again.   
At the end of the long table, he sat, his face covered in the shadows thrown by the roaring fire in the fireplace. When he saw her enter, he immediately closed his book, scrambling to stand. “Lady Camille,” he said, flustered. “I apologize. I take my leave of you.”  
“Wait,” she said, holding up her hand for him to stop. “I just want to speak with you.”  
“I’m not entirely certain that that is a good idea,” he said quietly, still inching for the door.  
A thought popped into Cami’s head, and she found herself voicing it before she could stop herself. “Have you been avoiding me? Is that why I was turned away from seeing you the other day?”  
“My lady, I would never…” he said, but he was not very convincing.   
“You ought to start being honest with me, Master Mikaelson. And not just about this matter. It seems you have been dishonest in other areas as well, and it’s in your best interest to tell the truth if you wish to leave this place with your head intact.”  
“Dishonest?”  
She leveled a look at him that said Don’t play daft with me, and said, “Start talking, Master Mikaelson. The truth only, if you please.”  
“My lady, I know not of which you speak.”  
“Master Mikaelson, do not make the mistake of thinking me unintelligent.” Her voice was tense, and she spoke through gritted teeth, standing close to him and holding eye contact to show that she was serious.  
“You know I think you are the smartest person I know,” he said quietly.  
Her cheeks flushed with color, and she felt as if she were going to pass out. Her stomach was in a puddle around her feet, and she forgot for a second to be mad at him. After the moment had passed, though, her look hardened again, and she said, “Tell me who you are, Master Mikaelson. Who you really are.”  
Even in the dim light provided by the fire, she could see the color drain from his face, and she could see a fear in his eyes. “I had hoped that you would not find out…”  
“So it’s true, then,” she said, mostly to herself. She felt the blood draining from her own face, and she felt sick to her stomach.   
Klaus stepped closer to her, his hands clasping her shoulders as he looked her dead in the eye. “I swear to you that I am telling the truth when I say that I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for it to get this far.”  
“Then what did you mean?”  
He let go of her, and stepped back, turning away from her for a second. His hand when up to his forehead and then ran through his curls. He took a deep breath before he spun on her, standing so close to her face that she felt frightened. “I meant only to stay here for a day or two, but then I saw you. And I danced with you and I spoke with you and read with you and I knew that I could not leave. So I kept up the lie because I had to, to be close to you,” he said. He was speaking so quickly, so intensely that she almost couldn’t understand him.   
“I found out that you are now betrothed to someone else,” he said. “And so I shut myself away because I could not bear the thought that I had taken all this risk to be close to you, only to have to accept the reality that you are promised to another.”  
Something inside her shattered, and she felt she could no longer stand. Cami sat at the table, clutching her stomach as if she were going to be sick. It seemed impossible that the words she had just heard had actually been spoken aloud by him, that he had said everything she had desperately wished to hear. But now that they had been said, she had no idea what to say in response. No matter what she said, she felt like it wouldn’t matter, like her fate was already sealed and there was nothing she could do to change this.   
“What am I to do with this information?” she said quietly, breathlessly. She could not look at him, only look at the floor.   
He knelt before her, clutching her hands in his, staring up at her pleadingly until she met his eyes. “Run away with me,” he said. Cami didn’t say anything, just stared at him in bewilderment. Klaus started talking a mile a minute, nervously rambling as he tried to convince her. “You must pack your bags tonight, we will run away under cover of darkness. Take the book that I gave you, and you can use it to study to be a midwife. Take only the bare necessities of your belongings, and we will make a life for ourselves somewhere far from here, and far from Suffolk.”  
“You…you are speaking like a madman,” she said, snatching her hands away.  
“Why? Why, Camille? Why will you not have me?”  
She stood indignantly, leaving him kneeling on the floor. “You have no right to speak to me that way,” she said tersely.   
She started to leave but he stood quickly, grabbing her wrist to stop her, much like she had tried to stop him in the library when he’d given her the book. And then she felt herself being pulled into him, her mouth being covered by his as he crushed his lips against hers. There was a sense of urgency, of pleading in the kiss, an unspeakable and undeniable request.   
After a moment, her head started to swim and she found herself kissing back, letting her lower lip be captured in between his, letting her nose be filled with the heady scent of him. His hands were on her back, holding her close to him, and her arms wrapped around his neck, her fingers weaving in his curls. With this kiss, all her anger and mistrust fell away and she knew then that he truly cared for her, that he desperately wanted to be with her.  
He kissed her as if at any second, she would change her mind and pull away and slap him across the face. But she was holding on to him with no intention of letting go or of stopping.   
He pulled away slowly, resting his forehead against hers as she struggled to regain control over her breathing. Her eyes remained closed as he held her, his arms around her waist, and all she could think was that she would follow this man anywhere. It didn’t matter where he had come from or what his story was or that he wasn’t who she thought he was at first. It mattered that he felt something strong for her, something real.  
Inhaling deeply, she stepped away from him, opening her eyes. “Meet me at the East Gate in one hour. Do not bring anyone, and do not be late.”  
Klaus’s smile at this lit up the whole room, and she pulled him into a quick, passionate kiss, before she broke away and ran down the corridor back to her apartments.   
Once in her room, she took a second to stop this whirlwind that seemed to be spinning around her, trying to make sure that she was doing the right thing. Absentmindedly she put her hand to her lips, feeling the remnants of their kiss tingling there. She knew, without a doubt, that a kiss like that was nothing to be trifled with. A kiss like that definitely meant that she was making the right decision.  
Quickly she rummaged through her trunks and her closets, careful to do so as quietly as possible so as not to wake Eleanor, who was still sound asleep in Cami’s bed. She picked only a few dresses, which she stuffed into a rucksack, knowing that she could always make more at a later point once she and Klaus established their life somewhere far away from here.   
When she had packed the bag with only the essentials, as she’d been instructed, she got dressed in a riding habit and cloak, and then took one last look around her room. She would miss the castle, she would miss her family. She knew it was very likely that she would never see them again. But to her, it was worth it to be with him, especially in comparison to the other scenario in which she’d never see them again but be married to a man she had never even met.   
Her hand was on the doorknob to go when she heard, “You would leave without saying goodbye?” Eleanor was sitting up in bed, looking hurt.  
“Sh, I’m not going anywhere,” Cami said nervously. “Go back to sleep.”  
“Sister, I know when you are lying. You’re running away with him, aren’t you?”  
After a moment’s hesitation, Cami said, “Yes.”  
Eleanor got out of bed and walked over to her sister, pulling her into a tight hug. “I will miss you. But I wish you all the best. I won’t tell Father,” she added hastily. “I will say I don’t know where you went.”  
“Do you think this is a mistake?” Cami said, doubt starting to seep in as it became more and more of a reality to her.  
“Certainly not,” Eleanor said. “You care for him. You love him. And so you should be with him while you’ve got the chance. Most of us won’t be so lucky. Leave now and take care.”  
“Goodbye, Sister.” They hugged once more, and then Cami left before she could get cold feet.   
Slinging the rucksack across her shoulder, she snuck down the dark hallways until she had reached a door in the East Wing out onto the grounds. As she pushed the door open, she took a deep breath, feeling a sense of finality seep into her stomach. She had never done anything so crazy, so drastic in all her life. But it felt unquestionably and undeniably right.   
He was waiting for her on the far edge of the grounds, by the trees, out of sight to anyone who wasn’t specifically looking for him. Two horses were standing impatiently beside him, and as she approached, he handed over the reins to one of them. She kissed him again, hastily and sloppily, just for the novelty of it. It was so good to finally have something that she had wanted, something that was previously forbidden to her.   
When he pulled back, he smiled at her, and she had never felt so ready for something in her life. “Let’s go,” he said.

————- At first, they started riding into the night, Klaus in the lead, following a worn-out road as best as they could in the pitch dark. And then the first lighter shades of blue showed on the horizon and dawn would break within the hour. They slowed their horses, and Cami drew up beside him. “Do you know where we’ll go?” she said.  
“Somewhere clear across France. Maybe even in Germany. It will all depend on how desperate your father will be to find you. But don’t worry, I think I have quite a talent in avoiding fathers.”  
“What do you mean by that?” Cami asked. Her stomach sank as she imagined that he had been in situations like this before, running away with a girl and trying to outrun her angry father.  
“My own father has been quite determined over the years to track me down, but so far I have done a passable job at eluding his vengeful grasp.”  
“Why is your father chasing you?”  
He took a deep breath before he started talking again, and she could see it was painful for him to speak of it. “My mother had an affair with someone else, that someone else being my biological father. And the father that raised me and my siblings has always taken this offense out on me. My siblings and I have been trying to outrun him ever since he discovered. That’s the short of it, anyway,” he said.  
“And what’s the long of it?”  
“A story for another day, perhaps,” he said quietly, obviously uncomfortable.  
“We have many days ahead of us,” she said, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “There will be time, when you’re ready.”  
They rode on as a starry sky gave way to the day. After a while, he suggested that they give the horses a rest and some time to graze. They stopped in a grassy knoll and let the horses eat while she and Klaus kissed. He laid her down in the grass, lying on top of her, his hands running over the bodice of her dress. They kissed like this for what felt like hours, totally lost in each other.  
“We should keep moving,” she said after a while, although she really didn’t want to. “The more distance we can get between us and the castle, the better. I don’t know how hard my father will try in order to find me, but I don’t want to take any chances.” They got back in the saddle and kept moving, neither of them really knowing where they were going.   
After another couple hours of riding, Klaus said, “I think I know where we are. I think if we continue on this road and then head West, we will be on the road to Burgundy.”   
She felt intoxicated by the idea that in a few days, if they kept riding at this pace, they could be halfway across the country.   
Another hour later, they came upon a wide river that they rode along for a while. “We will have to cross it eventually,” Klaus said grimly, watching the water move swiftly downstream. They found a place that was worn down on either side of the bank, seeming to indicate that people had forded the river here before.   
“I’m not sure about this,” Cami said. “Are you certain that we can’t keep following the river North?”  
“We will need to go West, hopefully far enough to get out of the country. This seems to be the safest place to cross that we’ve come upon so far.” He looked at her, saw the worry in her eyes as she watched the running water cascade over submerged boulders. “It will be alright, I promise. I will go first.”  
She watched as his horse descended the bank ahead of her, and after some coaxing, went into the water. So far the water was just below his horse’s knees, but she was sure it was deeper at the middle of the river. He looked back over his shoulder to reassure her, to beckon for her to follow him. Even though there was a sinking feeling in her gut, she kicked her horse on.   
The sound of the rushing water filled her ears as the horse stepped into the river reluctantly. It seemed unsure, unwilling to take another step forward, but she pressed her heels into its sides once again and urged it on. When Klaus turned around to look at her again, she tried to give him a reassuring smile, certain that it was not convincing.  
The horse began to shake beneath her as it took more steps, and she tried to fill her head with a mantra: Remain Calm remain calm remain calm. She hoped that at least if she could act calm, it would convince the horse to be calm too. So far, it wasn’t working so well. The horse was taking short, shaky steps farther into the river, but it seemed like at any second the thing would turn around and back up onto the bank.   
It was funny to her how everything could change in one single instant, but that instant always seemed to take an eternity. She felt the beast’s step falter, its legs start to go from underneath it. She felt it go completely sideways, her with it, as the icy rush of cold water hit them. She saw, for only a fraction of a second, Klaus’s eyes widen in horror as he saw what was happening. And she heard him shout her name, could hear him calling to her long after she had been pulled into the water.   
She and the horse were being pulled downstream, her foot still stuck in a stirrup. The water was moving too fast, the horse in too much of a panic to try to extract herself. All of this had happened in a second, but it seemed to be going by so slowly, especially when she was being pulled under. The water was getting deeper and deeper now, and it was hard to keep her head above the surface. Every time she opened her mouth to scream for help, her mouth filled with water and her head went under once again.  
Somehow her foot became unstuck from the stirrup, and she saw the horse struggling farther and farther downstream, its long neck straining to keep its head up. The water swirled around her, dragging her under more and more, the weight of her dress making it harder to swim for the surface each time. Still, she could hear Klaus’s desperate screams, “Camille! Camille,” and she could hear them getting farther away each time he called.   
The water was moving faster now when she started to see large boulders popping above the surface. With each one she passed, she tried to grab onto it but always got brushed past them by the rush of the water. Finally she came upon one that seemed to be in her direct path and she stuck out her arms in the hopes that she could grab hold of it to at least stop the downward motion.   
Something hard hit her head as she current dragged her right past the boulder, and she felt herself sinking lower and lower beneath the surface. This time, she knew with horrid finality, she would not be able to reach the surface.   
Time slowed to a standstill then. She had had so little time to spend with Klaus, and now it would all be taken away from her. She wondered if this was divine punishment in a way, if G-d had seen that she was running away and decided an appropriate retribution would be to kill her. All of these thoughts clouded her mind now as she sank lower beneath the water, the air supply in her lungs dwindling by the second. Everything was beginning to get fuzzy, the edges of her vision blurring.  
The last thing she thought of was how this whole business of dying was taking an inconveniently long time. And then a darkness closed in on her, enveloped her, and then there was nothing at all.

————— Klaus had a crazy idea, but he was desperate. If something in her condition didn’t change in the next hour, he was going to slaughter every last person he came into contact with out of sheer frustration. He was tired of waiting, he wanted results and he wanted them now.   
Slowly, he extracted her IV from her arm, careful to cover the puncture mark with a bandage. He lowered the railing on her bed and easily scooped her up, carrying her to the bathroom. It frightened him to feel how limp she was in his arms, almost like she was dead.  
In the bathroom, he turned on the cold water and filled up the tub. He had started to untie her hospital gown but then stopped himself. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen her naked before— he had, many times— it was just that she wasn’t here to give her permission, and something about that felt very wrong to him. So he left the hospital gown on as he lowered her into the bathtub.  
As the cold water came into contact with her skin, she gasped and convulsed, but she didn’t open her eyes or make any other signs that she was awake. He had hoped that the water would lower her body temperature and break her fever, but he felt like this was a shot in the dark. It would take a little time though, he knew, so he wasn’t ready to count this idea out yet. At any rate, at least he felt somewhat useful, like he was doing something instead of just sitting around waiting.   
He studied her carefully, searching for any sort of sign that she might be waking up. She continued to shudder and gasp sporadically, shivering constantly, but never gave any indication that she was conscious. Every few minutes he would put his hand to her forehead to see if there was any difference. It was hard for him to tell.   
He murmured her name, whispered it into her fingers as he held her hand. “Camille.” He wanted so desperately for this all to be over, for her to be awake and to be Cami again. Her skin was so sallow, her cheeks hollowed out from lack of food, her hair a tangled mess, and it scared him to see her like this. But he knew that he had to be there. He had to be the one to take care of her.  
Her shivering became more and more violent as the minutes passed, but he still could not tell if the water was lowering her temperature. She took long, shuddering gasps as if she were hyperventilating, as if she couldn’t get enough air in her. He was feeling worried now, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, as he wondered if he had done the wrong thing and was causing more harm than good.  
He clutched her hand harder, saying her name louder now. “Camille. Camille, come back to me. Wake up.” She was practically thrashing now, water starting to slosh over the side of the tub and onto the floor and onto him.   
With a monumental gasp, her eyes flew open, her mouth hanging as she drew in a huge breath of air. She was lurching forward, falling onto him, throwing her soaking arms around him as she half-fell, half-jumped out of the tub.   
She was laying on top of him, soaking his clothes in ice-cold water, and she was breathing like someone had just tried to suffocate her but she’d gotten free. But her eyes were open, and she was staring at him. There was a light in her eyes, a familiar spark that told him that she was awake, and that she would be okay.   
Her expression was unreadable as she continued to stare at him. “It’s you,” she whispered after a long moment. He didn’t know what she meant by that, but he didn’t really have time to process it; he was still reeling from the fact that she was conscious now.   
He sat up, bringing her with him, wrapping her up in his arms as he laughed, eyes brimming with tears. “I was so worried,” he said into her wet hair.   
Effortlessly, he picked her up, wrapping her in a towel as he carried her back to her hospital bed. He got her a fresh hospital gown and helped her into it, all the while with her staring at him in amazement. He put his hand to her forehead, feeling that her fever had finally broken.  
“It’s you,” she said again.  
“It’s me,” he said.  
“You were in my dream.”  
“What happened in your dream?” he said, sitting beside her, holding her hand.  
She smiled, shaking her head. “I…I don’t remember exactly. But I know you were there. And I know you meant something to me.”  
“I hope that is true outside of the dream as well,” he said, smiling wryly.  
“You know it is,” she said, smiling back. And she leaned in and gave him a small kiss on the lips. 

_________ “I’m fine, boys, really, I can walk on my own.”   
Still, when Klaus and Elijah got to Cami’s apartment building, Klaus carried her up the stairs and into her unit. She had been in the hospital for eight days at that point, and it felt amazing to be home.   
Elijah left, and she thanked him for looking after her. As soon as he was gone, his brother reached into his jacket and pulled out half a dozen pill bottles. “These are all herbal supplements that will hopefully prevent such an occurrence in the future,” he said, setting them on her kitchen counter and going through each one, explaining what they all did.  
Cami rolled her eyes at him. “I’m fine, really. I don’t need to take all these. I highly doubt I’ll be getting sick again any time soon.”  
“Humor me,” he said, pushing the bottles towards her.  
“You can’t be serious.”  
“You do understand that you were sick with a highly dangerous, potentially lethal virus that I was helpless to cure, don’t you?”  
She rolled her eyes, but felt slightly guilty, knowing that it had been agonizing for him to sit there and watch her suffer. She made a great show of taking one pill from each bottle, chasing them with a glass of water.  
“Happy?” she said.  
“Ecstatic.”  
She leaned in and kissed him once. “Thanks for being such a good caretaker.”  
“You should rest. Would you like me to stay?”  
Her first instinct was to say no, that she would be fine on her own, but she could read from his expression that he wanted to stay. Even if she had said no, she doubted he would have accepted that answer. “Yes,” she said, and his eyes lit up.   
As they curled up in her bed, Klaus held her close. “Do you remember anything more about your dream?”  
“No,” she said, her voice sounding disappointed. “Why?”  
“Just curious to know what you saw in there.”  
“I just know it had something to do with you.”  
Soon she had drifted off to sleep, but he remained awake, smiling to himself. It filled him with unspeakable joy that he had been in her dream, even though he didn’t know anything else about it. To him, that meant that he was always on her mind, even when her mind was completely addled by fever.   
It was good to have her back now, to hold her close, to not worry that she was seeing something horribly traumatic in her dream. He vowed that no matter how hard she protested, he was going to try to get her to keep taking those herbal supplements because he never wanted to feel so helpless again.  
After a while he felt himself grow tired as well, and felt himself drifting off to sleep where he and Cami could dream together.


End file.
